Self‐employment among women: Do children matter more than we previously thought?

This paper presents an estimation approach that addresses the problems of sample selection and endogeneity of fertility decisions when estimating the effect of young children on women's self‐employment. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, 1982–2006, we find that ignoring self‐selection and endogeneity leads to underestimating the effect of young children. Once both sources of biases are accounted for, the estimated effect of young children roughly triples when compared to uncorrected results. This finding is robust to several changes in the specification and to the use of a different dataset.     

Modes of cross-cultural leadership adjustment: adapting leadership to meet local conditions and/or changing followers to match personal requirements?

In this article, we present a study that explores modes of cross-cultural leadership adjustment (CLA) and investigates the forces influencing them. Nigel Nicholson’s theory of work role transitions was used as the theoretical foundation to explore work role requirements (consisting of role discretion and novelty of job demands) as potential predictors of modes of CLA. Our data were collected from expatriate senior managers working in Thailand. The results show that the majority of our expatriate executives make adjustments to their leadership approach and try to change Thai employees – thus demonstrating the adoption of an exploration mode of adjustment – and that role requirements, Thai employee characteristics, the local hierarchy system and the expatriate leaders’ perceptions all influence the latter’s modes of adjustment. Based on our findings, we develop a theoretical framework and a number of research propositions. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings.     

Barriers to women entrepreneurship. Different methods,different results?

Building on research by Akehurst et al. (Serv Ind J 32:2489–2505, 2012), this study analysed internal and external factors in women entrepreneurship and linked these factors to the barriers that women face when starting businesses. To do so, two contrasting statistical techniques were used: PLS and QCA. After analysing results from each of these techniques, we observed that family duties and difficulties in obtaining financing (both internal and external) were the main factors related to barriers faced by women entrepreneurs.     

Do all institutions benefit from leadership training? Challenging tradition through systems inquiry

There is a fascination in the business community with leadership. There is an endless stream of training and development programs on how to become effective leaders to the extent that leadership training is now a big business. But the fascination is not restricted to the business community. People are enthralled by the idea of leadership, search for more information on it, and truly believe that by becoming a leader, they can reach a more desirable future. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that all organizations do not benefit universally from their investment in employees' leadership training. After reviewing the leadership literature and systems concepts, it is recommended that the redesign of an organization in a social systemic framework will lead to optimization of benefit from leadership training.     

Do transformational-oriented leadership and transactional-oriented leadership have an impact on whistle-blowing attitudes? A longitudinal examination conducted in US federal agencies

The benefits of effective leadership practices have often been examined. However, little is known about how these practices impact the perceptions of agency employees regarding whistle-blowing. For instance, only two cross-sectional studies were found to examine an association between transformational leadership (the most often studied leadership practice) and whistle-blowing attitudes. To extend these studies, we examined the relationship between transformational-oriented leadership behaviours and whistle-blowing attitudes using panel data. The findings revealed that transformational-oriented leadership increased the extent to which employees in agencies felt they could disclose wrongdoing without facing retaliation. Transactional-oriented leadership was also found to have a positive effect on these whistle-blowing behaviours; however, the effect size was smaller. The implications of these findings are thoroughly discussed in the article.     

Are (active) entrepreneurs a different breed?

We present data from an incentivized online experiment and responses from a set of validated psychological questionnaires to measure entrepreneurs' risk and time preferences and to identify entrepreneurs' personality characteristics. The analyses of the data suggest that intrinsic motivation positively relates to the likelihood of owning a business (i.e., being an active entrepreneur). We also found that subjects who scored higher on drive were relatively more risk seeking while those who scored higher on pessimism were more patient. The results of our study highlight the importance of studying personality traits to better understand what drives people to own a business.     

Do carbon traders behave as a herd?

This paper shows the existence of herding behavior in the European Carbon Futures Market and studies its possible causes and consequences. This market is characterized by leading the carbon price discovery process and by being highly dominated by professional traders. Both features make it an appropriate environment for the existence of herding. A patterns analysis indicates that the herding level increases in speculative periods, on those days on which the price and size clustering effect is stronger, and with the arrival of carbon-related news. Regarding possible market drivers, we find that herding behavior is positively related with the number of trades, the intraday volatility and on days with extreme returns. Our results appear to support the claim that the lower the availability of information, the higher the level of herding. Finally, we show that herding increases market volatility and leads carbon traders to overreact.     

Do health system reforms stand a chance?

While most major reforms of health systems fail, those that succeed are motivated by politicians' quest for reducing the health burden on their budget in response to a shift in voters' preferences away from public health. An Edgeworth box is used to depict their preferences, in addition to those of (potential) patients and health‐care providers. Politicians are found to severely constrain the area of mutual advantage, suggesting that only minor reforms are possible unless they promise to lower health‐care expenditure. An efficiency‐enhancing change that would enlarge the box and hence the area of mutual advantage would be to suppress the requirement imposed on health insurers to purchase domestically, rather than being free to directly import health‐care services and drugs.     

Corporate social and environmental disclosure as a sustainable development tool provided by board sub-committees: Do women directors play a relevant moderating role?

The aim of this research is to examine the impact of three audit committee characteristics on corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSR) disclosure: the existence of an audit committee, audit committee independence, and audit committee financial expertise. Moreover, this research analyzes the moderating effect of board gender diversity between these audit committees' attributes and CSR reporting. The results of analyzing 13,178 firm-year observations of non-financial companies show that the presence of an audit committee and audit committee financial expertise are positively associated with CSR disclosure. However, a higher proportion of non-executive directors in audit committees has a negative effect on the disclosure of CSR information. These findings suggest that some audit committees' features play an important role in ensuring the reporting of environmental, social, and economic information. Our evidence also indicates that the presence of female directors on boards increases the positive impact of financial expert membership of audit committees on CSR disclosure, while women directors moderate any negative effect of the percentage of independent directors on audit committees on CSR reporting by increasing the latter. In addition, female directors moderate the positive impact of the existence of an audit committee on the disclosure of CSR information by reducing the latter.     

Do UK charities have a lot to learn?

This article discusses the key findings of some recent research carried out into the application of market segmentation in the UK charity sector. 410 of the top performing charities (as ranked by income from voluntary donations) were surveyed to profile their major donor groups. Respondents were also asked to indicate how this data was used for fund-raising purposes both in terms of new donor recruitment and existing donor development. The findings show that with the exception of a very few large organizations, the UK charity sector still has much room for improving the sophistication of its fund-raising techniques.     

Should the monetary policy rule be different in a financial crisis?

This article reviews the finding that standard loss functions in output and inflation are higher during discretionary periods than in periods during which monetary policy is described by a rule, such as the Taylor rule. It shows that the finding is consistent with earlier research, but argues that we really do not know if the Taylor rule would have improved performance during the recent financial crisis. The article then considers modifications of policy rules to deal with changes in interest rate spreads, credit aggregates and banks׳ balance sheets.     

Do firms choose overcapacity or undercapacity in a vertical structure?

This study investigates capacity choice in a vertical structure in which each downstream firm makes its capacity decision, then a monopolistic upstream firm proposes the input price or two-part tariff contract. Finally, each downstream firm chooses its output (or price). Contrary to the conventional wisdom that both firms hold excess capacity in an Cournot competition, we find that each downstream firm always chooses undercapacity regardless of both the nature of goods and the competition modes. Second, we also show that capacity efficiency is higher under Cournot competition than under Bertrand competition. Third, even though there are double marginalization distortion and rent-extracting effect, we can achieve the monopoly equilibrium of the vertically integrated firm though two-part tariff contract.     

Stakeholder engagement is evolving: Do investors play a main role?

Stakeholder engagement, an essential component of the sustainability reporting strategy, is changing, as is the position of the different stakeholders in this evolving scenario. In this paper, we explore the effect of the pressure that a specific group of stakeholders, investors, exerts on the quality of the sustainability information disclosed. We intend to analyze if there has been a change in the role that investors play in sustainability reporting. By focusing on investors, we are paying attention to one of the less studied groups within the sustainability stakeholders. To this aim, we carry out a content analysis of the sustainability information disclosed by U.S. (shareholder-oriented country) and Spanish (stakeholder-oriented country) listed companies during the years 2013 to 2016. Our findings confirm the key role that investors play in the companies' sustainability strategies, demanding more and better sustainability information. We also find a reduction in the quality of sustainability disclosures in Spanish companies in the last year of our sample, showing a relevant change in this country that has been leading the sustainability rankings until now. The results of this paper are useful to investors and companies, as they reflect the changes on the information they demand, and for regulators, in order to create the adequate legal framework that will improve the quality of reporting. Regulators and financial agents should acknowledge this new scenario to adapt norms and actions accordingly.     

Do firms with different levels of environmental regulatory pressure behave differently regarding complementarity among innovation practices?

This study explores the complementary effects among environmental innovation, organizational innovation, and training for innovation and their effect on firm productivity, within a supermodularity framework. Furthermore, it attempts to understand whether different innovation practices are complements or substitutes for firm profitability according to the industrial environmental regulation context by distinguishing between clean and dirty industries. Using a Spanish technological innovation panel survey over the period 2008–2015, our findings indicate that the interrelationship between different innovation practices is complementary rather than substitutive, and the pattern of complementarity among innovation practices differs according to the environmental regulation under which an industry operates. Engaging in a broad range of innovation practices such as environmental and organizational innovations, clean industry can strengthen productivity. For dirty industries, our results indicate a greater affinity between training activities and environmental innovation than between environmental innovation and organizational innovation on firm productivity achievement. Taken all together, these results provide managers with considerable insights in terms of how to adapt the various combinatorial practices to the industrial environment in which they are embedded, taking market and regulatory pressure into account.     

Do bailouts buy votes? Evidence from a panel of Hessian municipalities

I study whether bailouts of local governments carry electoral benefits for state governments with a dataset covering 421 municipalities in the German state of Hesse over the period 1999–2011. I find that past bailouts have no economically significant effect on the municipality-level vote share of the parties that formed the state government in subsequent state elections. On the other hand, bailouts lead to vote increases for the ruling parties in subsequent local elections. On balance, these results suggest that electoral concerns are not the reason why central governments find it difficult to commit to a no-bailout policy.     

Do quality perceptions of health and social services vary for different ethnic groups? An empirical investigation

The United States is now more ethnically diverse than any other time in its history. In 2000, minority ethnic groups comprised 26% of the US population; by 2010, they comprise 35%, and in 2080 they will form the majority of American citizens. And among these ethnic groups, African Americans (12.4%), Hispanics (15.4%) and Asians (4.4%) were the most predominant in 2000. The growth of this segment of the population is not only in terms of numbers but also in terms of economic development. Minority groups are showing marked improvement in income and education levels leading to greater purchasing power. As a result, for‐profit companies are increasingly targeting minority populations with products and promotions specifically designed for specific minority groups. Even non profit organizations such as educational programs, social service and healthcare agencies are striving to design specific services and culturally competent outreach models in order to serve this increasingly diverse marketplace. But despite the strides made by non profit agencies, several studies note the tremendous disparities between the ethnic and racial groups in the seeking and the receipt of health‐care and social services. Additionally, there is limited empirical information about the perceptions of minority consumers. In order to effectively serve minority groups, it is essential to understand their experiences with the non profit service industry and to assess their ongoing concerns. In this study, we focus on two critical components of the non profit world – healthcare and social services. We conducted a survey to compare and contrast the social service and health‐care quality perceptions of three ethnic groups: Caucasians, African‐Americans and Hispanics. Our study, undertaken in collaboration with community health centers, reveals distinct differences in perceptions between the three ethnic groups. Based on our findings, we outline a set of implementable strategies for social service and community health organizations. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do supervisory inputs matter in a capital-intensive industry? Some evidence from a Japanese car transplant

We estimate a translog production function based on data from a Japanese automobile plant in the Midwest where output is determined by capital and different supervisory time inputs. We fit a model which allows for heteroskedastic errors, where this heteroskedasticity is a function of various variables affecting perceived target severity. We find that while, as expected, capital inputs are important, each supervisory time input is also significant in this capital-intensive industry. Linear homogeneity in these inputs is rejected. We find evidence of asymmetry in substitution among different components of supervisory time. This asymmetry has implications for the design and allocation of supervisory tasks. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do entrepreneurs from institutionally distinct countries apply different decision logic when internationalizing their companies? A multiple-case analysis

Literature on entrepreneurs’ decision logic has either focused on effectuation or causation, lacking comparison and analysis of logics when founders come from different institutional environments. This paper presents an exploratory study examining the behaviors, beliefs, and decisions of entrepreneurs (all typical drivers for new market entries), considering those institutional differences. Research was based on the comparison of two case studies of young software companies, one from Brazil and one from Germany, each founded by two entrepreneurs with similar academic and professional backgrounds. Results indicate that apparently, business environment affects founders’ decision logics with much more strength than the institutional environment.     

Do NPM-Type Reforms Lead to a Cultural Revolution Within Public Sector Organizations?

Abstract

Agencification and granting public sector organizations managerial autonomy in particular is believed to change organizational cultures, away from traditional compliance- and detail-oriented bureaucratic cultures and towards organizational cultures which are more oriented towards external customers. There is however very little empirical information on the relationship between managerial autonomy and organizational culture. Using a unique data set on public agencies in Flanders, we not only test how managerial autonomy affects the strength of a customer-oriented culture within public sectors but also examine whether this culture becomes dominant over traditional public administration culture. Analysis shows that managerial autonomy positively affects a customer-oriented culture; however, it does not make it a dominant culture.